In a few months, however, he was discovered, and his brothers
bought him out. He then went back to Cambridge, but left again
at the end of the same year without taking a degree.
Meantime, while on a visit to Oxford, he had met Southey, another
poet who was at this time a student there.
Robert Southey was born in 1774, and was the son of a Bristol
Linen draper, but he was brought up chiefly by an aunt in Bath.
At fourteen he went to school at Westminster, and later to
Balliol College, Oxford. When Coleridge met him he was just
twenty, and Coleridge twenty-two. Like Wordsworth, they were
both fired with enthusiasm for the French Revolution, and they
soon became friends.
With some others of like mind they formed a little society, which
they called the Pantisocracy, from Greek words meaning all-equal-
rule. They decided that they should all marry and then emigrate
to the banks of the Susquehanna (chosen, it has been said,
because of its beautiful name), and there form a little Utopia.
Property was to be in common, each man laboring on the land two
hours a day in order to provide food for the company.
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